6/22/2013

Zombie Apocalypse

Joe the moviegoer is like a helpless child stranded amidst
the zombie apocalypse of World War Z. The
zombie flicks just don’t stop swarming the multiplex. Summer after summer,
movie after movie, Joe joins the masses and gets sandwiched between a family of
four, in which mom smuggles a bag of cellophane wrapped goodies into the
theatre and passes them to the kids whilst dad makes inane comments and eats nachos.
Cheap Tuesday is Doomsday at the multiplex in summer movie season, especially
when the masses show up for redundant cash-grabs like World War Z.

World War Z is the
penultimate zombie flick on auto-pilot. It’s only a matter of time before
another of these brain-dead wannabe blockbusters leaves fans of mindless
entertainment crying for a change. When the zombies awaken, the genre will
finally die.

There’s nothing especially bad about zombie movies, as
they’ve served up a good mix of bloody good times and useful allegory since
George A. Romero popularized the ghouls back in 1968. Zombies, rooted more in
real world mysticism than any other movie monster, are utilitarian and prone
for re-invention. They moved at a glacial pace back in the day, but circa
2002’s 28 Days Later and 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, zombies have quickened
their pace to move at the current speed of the glaciers. They’re melting fast.

World War Z, for
all its pre-production bombast,doesn’t
do anything new with the genre or use the tried and tested zombie bloodlust for
any apparent allegory. The film, which stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations
worker/mercenary named Gerry, takes “zombie apocalypse” to the extreme and amps
up the body count as zombie terror goes viral and threatens to wipe out the
planet. It’s essentially Contagion
zombified. What, if anything, does World
War Z try to say with an extravagant spectacle of globetrotting undead?

It seems as if World
War Z wants to offer something profound as Pitt competently plays the
reluctant hero and assumes a mission to find a cure for the outbreak in order
to protect his wife (Mireille Enos) and kids from harm. The zombies’ hunger
takes Gerry to South Korea, Israel, Wales, and Canada, but World War Z moves so clunkily—it’s like a video game moving from
stage to stage—that the story never allows for any depth or resonance. (And
many of the secondary characters are so disposable and inept that that World War Z offers the occasional bit of
unintentional comedy.) The zombies have something to do with consumption and
collective consciousness, but too much of the film consists of dialogue-free long shots
of zombies wreaking havoc on the masses for it to add up to something
meaningful.

World War Z is
aptly entertaining, though, as the zombies flow through the streets on what
looks to be the same algorithm that generates destructive waves in disaster
flicks like Hereafter and The Impossible. Cranking up the speed
and ferociousness of the zombies, director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) provides plenty of familiar thrills that helped
rejuvenate the genre a decade ago, yet he smartly withholds much of the blood,
cuts, and gore, thus leaving the excess up to the effects. World War Z has a few decent frights, too, so die-hard zombie fans
will probably like the mix of spectacle and scares.

There’s only one legitimately impressive sequence, however,
to muster any kind of enthusiasm from viewers who have grown tired of watching
zombies and filmmakers play the same game. It’s the final act, which puts Gerry
in the hero role in a medical centre that holds the potential vaccine amidst a
sea of zombies. The tense hospital sequence strips zombie horror to its roots
and does away with the large-scale spectacle generated by the crappy CGI. The
tension is real in these twenty minutes as the audience sits on edge in
anticipation of what lurks around the corners in the quiet halls of the
hospital. For all that’s been added to the world of zombie movies, they seem to
work best in their old-school minimalist horror.

The finale’s good, but World
War Z delivers awfully late in the game to satisfy. One can’t help but feel
like a zombie during the mind-numbing formula of the first acts. Brad Pitt
might be the saviour of the zombie apocalypse, both in and of the movies, if he
helps people awaken and exterminate the zombies. Joe the moviegoer (and his
brains) will thank him.